Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for October 02, 2008

Considering Roland Hedley, that’d be a yes.

Shows the absurdity of TV news

This speaks volumes about the pressure of the Internet on the print media. It’s precisely sites such as this that may save the endangered journalists and editorial artists.

This is why sound bites have usurped intelligent discourse. Spend an hour with Christopher Hitchens debating Andrew Sullivan and you’ll see the difference.

The difference may well be clearly in evidence tonight vis-a-vis Biden/Palin - the focus teams are no doubt working to trim Biden’s answers down to manageable size for T-n-V, and force-feed enough into Palin to overcome her glib shallowness.

Biden is the winner, as long as he remembers to speak to the whole audience. He is honest.

Palin is one of the Snakes In Suits, and she will try to respond to the fact that the average,.. average i.q. of voters is close to 100.

If you have ever tried to talk with someone whose i.q. is, say, 85, you see what both candidates need to do if they want smiles from the whole audience. A small and definite statement with simple words easily grasped, followed by a short in depth explication and a simple summation; simple, normal, simple; these three parts to whatever one says.

Biden has the clear advantage of public speaking to various groups and an easy understanding of the issues, as long as he visualizes himself surrounded by four groups of voters: I.Q? 75, 90, 100, and 120.

I once decided to take what I wanted to say, throw out the detailing and just keep the verbal sketch, cut up each statement into very small sound bites, making it about five mini-statements, and feed it slowly to a young man who was a nice person and whom I respected, but who probably had an i.q. of about 85. He told me that he was so relieved that now I had not talked down to him, but respected him and was treating him like an equal. I guess before he could not understand me, and thought that I was trying to b.s. him when I was just talking the way I feel most comfortable with. I cannot think of myself as smart except i.q. of course, if I did not even understand that I would be considered being more real and more respectful if I would slow down and speak just one small thing at a time. He was a nice person, and I was horrified that he had thought before that I was dissing him, when I was not. I respect godly people, and God uses each of us equally.

Biden makes a much better father image than #%@! does, and about now we will go for a protective father rather than a selfish Mommy Dearest; type female.

Biden, any and every day. {:-D

GLIB SHALLOWNESS? Please… it’s only “glib” if one can actually finish a sentence, including a subject and predicate; and then only if the answer has some relationship, however tenuous, to the question posed. So far, in Palin’s case, the shallowness is merely painful… although I don’t suppose, upon reflection, that her digressions, self-interrupted speech patterns and awkward delivery are significantly different from any other politician speaking extempore.

The one big thing to worry about is that Palin’s been faking her ingenuousness up to now and intends to resurrect the barracuda tonight.